"Try 'nugatory' or 'inferior,'" she'd sneered at him. "Maybe you won't stumble over those."
At that point, his fury had been such that he'd feared he was about to strike her. So he'd turned sharply on his heel and headed for the door.
"Wait, Makah'Alay! Don't forget to take your meager p-p-p-pride with you!"
That had been the taunt that sent him over the edge. The one that gutted the hardest.
Intent on proving her and everyone else wrong, on proving to himself that he wasn't the piece of shit everyone thought him to be, he'd left her and gone straight to the Grizzly Spirit to make his bargain.
That had been the last time he'd seen her, and those her last words to him. Once he realized she'd only been using him to free Grizzly, he'd vowed to himself that no matter what, he'd never again love any woman. That he would never, ever open himself up to that kind of pain and humiliation.
It just wasn't worth it.
And he wasn't so weak that he needed validation from another. He lived his life for himself and he preferred it that way. He didn't need anyone else in his world.
"We need to get you something for your pain and wounds."
Kateri's voice dragged him back to the present and to the fact that she was still holding on to him.
For a second, he thought she was talking about his memories, until he again felt the physical pain of his fight. Releasing her, he took a step back, brushing his hand over the worst of the wounds in his side. "There's nothing to be done for them."
"What do you mean?"
"I told you, Kateri. I'm immortal. They'll heal on their own."
"Don't they hurt?"
Of course they did. While he'd beat the crap out of the demon, the demon wasn't inexperienced. Little bastard had kicked the shit out of him.
But she was being kind, so he kept his sarcasm to himself and nodded.
"Then we can-"
"Nothing will take the pain away, Kateri. Dark-Hunter powers don't work that way."
She frowned in confusion. "Dark-who? What?"
He rubbed his clean hand over his face as he remembered that she wouldn't have a clue about his brethren, even though Talon had once been a member of their elite brotherhood.
Although technically, Ren wasn't really one and never had been. He predated the first official Dark-Hunters by a couple thousand years. And because of that, he was the only one considered a Dark-Hunter that Acheron, their leader, hadn't trained. In fact, Acheron hadn't even known Ren existed until Cabeza had crossed over four thousand years ago, and the Atlantean had gone to train him for his Dark-Hunter duties in the Yucatan.
Acheron had been as shocked by Ren's existence as Ren had been by his.
Unlike the other Dark-Hunters, Artemis had resurrected Ren only because of her promise to his mother that she wouldn't let him die as a child-she'd sworn a sacred vow on the River Styx that she would watch over him.
To breach that oath would have cost her her own life.
Since Artemis was immortal and rather self-absorbed, she didn't have the best grasp on what differentiated a human child from an adult. So she'd returned him to life out of fear that if she didn't, she'd die, too.
And because of the dark powers she had to use to restore his life, it had "gifted" him with fangs and an inability to walk in daylight. Artemis told the other Dark-Hunters she'd created that those were a result of what they were pledged to hunt.
But once he'd been brought back, Ren had slowly learned the truth of his own birth and of the secrets of his mother's Greek pantheon.
The power to bring the dead back to life was one Artemis had stolen from Apollymi's son. As such, Artemis couldn't control it entirely. But it didn't matter to him. He'd been too grateful to come back and try to rectify his own stupidity that he wasn't about to complain about hers.
Right now, he didn't want to go into any of that with Kateri. Nor did he want anyone else to know how different he was from the others. The Dark-Hunters accepted him as one of their own, and since none of them knew his true age, they didn't question his Dark-Hunter designation.
They assumed he was a lot younger than he was and he didn't bother to correct them. Only Acheron knew the truth about him and only he knew the truth about who and what Acheron really was. A fact he kept from Acheron. Having lived his own crappy life, he wasn't about to dredge up Acheron's past that made Ren's look like a walk through Disney World. Since both of them wanted their pasts forgotten, Ren was more than happy to oblige their Atlantean leader.